Sunday, May 26, 2013

Saturday Night at
Club Labrynth in Dalston, London E8, and there's an eerie sense of time
travel in the air. There's the music, for a start--old skool 'ardkore, all
frenetically staccato synth-stabs and octave-skipping piano oscillator-riffs
that flicker like the aural equivalent of a strobe, topped with soul-diva
histrionics and even the occasional, sped-up 'Mickey Mouse' vocal (one tune
sample-accelerates "life is a mystery" from Madonna's "Like A
Prayer").

Then there's the
crowd: very young, very white, and very ravey.Dancing, they make the kind of
geometric hand-moves you haven't seen in London clubs for years, and during the
rinky-dinky fairy-tale keyboard interludes they outstretch their hands to the heavens. A
few kids even sport white gloves!And
there's the MC, exhorting

the crowd in an
East London accent with not a trace of junglist patois, asking "can you
feel the rush?!", chanting "Oi oi! Oi oi!.

It's like we've gone back to 1992, like
jungle never happened and the rave dream never
died.Except there's these subtle
differences that betray the fact that hardcore is
three years older.The music's faster,
for a start: a palsied 165
beats-per-minute ('92 hardcore was about 140 bpm). And the atmosphere is different--luv'd
up but not mental, friendly yet reserved.People smile, ask for

a sip of your
Evian, gently pat your shoulder as they push through the crowd. But the eye
contact is ever so slightly guarded. It's like the scene is tentatively
feeling its way back to the effervescent euphoria of hardcore's golden age.

For it's 1995, and this is happy
hardcore--a bunch of kids across the U.K. who are trying to
re-ignite the rave fantasy of love, peace and unity.Some are very young,
teenagers who missed 1991/92, who are only now going through the honeymoon period
with Ecstasy and require the appropriate rush-activating soundtrack.
Others are '92 veterans in their early twenties, who were alienated when 'ardkore
turned first 'dark' and then jungalistic, who drifted off into

progressive house
or garage for a while, but are now getting back into it.

HARDCORE, THE
STORY SO FAR

Once upon a time,
hardcore was just hardcore, no prefix. And all hardcore was happy, in so far as it
was designed to enhance and intensify the Ecstasy experience.Almost all of the
leading lights in today's experimental drum & bass scene were making

luv'd up looney
chunes back in '92.

Take Moving Shadow,
now purveyors of ambient-tinged
'audio-couture'. Back then, their roster was firmly on the happy tip, from Blame's
"Music Takes You", with its percussive blasts of hypergasmic
soul-diva vocal, to the near-symphonic elation of Hyper-On Experience tunes like
"Assention" and "Imajicka".As late as 1993, Moving Shadow put out some fiercely
happy tracks, like Foul Play's "Open Your Mind" and "Finest
Illusion". Even Goldie, the
pioneer of dark-core, started out making deliriously,disturbingly
blissed-out tunes like Rufige Cru's "Menace", complete with helium-shrill
sped-up vocals.

So what happened? Well, partly in a
violent swerve away from the

commercialisation
of hardcore (i.e. the spate of kids' TV-theme based chart-hits like
"Sesame's Treet" and "Trip To Trumpton" that followed The
Prodigy's "Charley"),
and partly as a reaction against the cartoon zaney-ness of squeaky voices, producers
began to sever the musical ties that connected hardcore to rave culture.They focused on breakbeats and bass (i.e. the
hip hop and dub

elements), and
removed the uplifting choruses and piano riffs (i.e. the housey/disco
aspects).A trace of techno persisted, but
only in the form of sinister
atmospherics.Emergent by the end of
'92, with tracks like Metalheads'
"Terminator" and Satin Storm's "Think I'm Going Out Of My
Head",this new style
was called 'dark side'.

It was almost like the scene's inner circle
had consciously decided to see who was really
down with the programme, to deliberately alienate the "lightweights"."It was mostly DJ's who were into
dark," remembers Slipmatt. From his early
days in SL2 (who scored a Number 2 hit in '92 with "On A Ragga Tip"),
through to his current status as top happy-core DJ/producer, Slipmatt has

pursued an
unswervingly euphoric course."All
I heard from people at the time," he recalls of the
'dark' era, "was moans."

In retrospect, dark-core's anti-populist,
headfuck self-indulgence can be seen as a vital
prequel to the astonishing ambient-tinged directions that drum & bass pursued
through late '93 into 1994.But at the
time, it turned people off, big time.It was no fun. Exuding bad-trippy dread and
twitchy, jittery paranoia, dark-side seemed
to reflect a sort of collective come-down after the E-fuelled high of
'92.Alienated, the punters deserted in
droves to the milder climes of house
and garage.

But not all of them. A tiny faction of
hardcore fans, who wanted celebratory music but weren't
prepared to forsake funky breakbeats for house's programmed rhythms, stuck to
their guns. Through '93 into '94, this sub-scene--derided within the drum
& bass community, even as jungle itself was scorned and marginalised by
the outside world--continued to release upful tunes.

There was Impact, the label
started by DJ Seduction, creator of the '92 classic "Sub Dub" (with its
enchanting sample of folk-rock maiden Maddy Prior [INCORRECT! IT'S 'RUSHES AND BRIARS', TRADITIONAL ENGLISH FOLK TUNE BUT NOT MADDY SINGING IT) and idol of happy

hardcore fanatic
Moby.

There was Kniteforce, the label
founded by Chris Howell using

the ill-gotten
gains of Smart E's "Sesame's Treet". And by early '94, there was Remix Records,
the Camden-based shop and label started by DJ/producer Jimmy J, with funding from
Howell (who also records under the names Luna-C and Cru-L-T).

Seduction, Howell and Jimmy J are just
three of the prime movers in a happy hardcore scene
that operates in parallel with its estranged cousin, jungle, but has its own network of
labels, its own hierarchy of DJ/producers, its own circuit of clubs.Labels like Hectic, Slammin', SMD, Asylum and
Slipmatt's own Universal; DJ's and
DJ/artists like Vibes, Dougal, Brisk, Sy & Unknown, Force & Evolution, Poosie, Red Alert
& Mike Slammer, Norty Norty, DJ Ham, Ramos & Supreme; venues like The Rhythm
Station in Aldershot, Die Hard in Leicester, Club Kinetic in Stoke-On-Trent,
Pandemonium in Wolverhampton, and, solitary bastions of the happy

vibe in the heart
of jungalistic London, Club Labrynth and Double Dipped.

Late last year, the tide started to turn
for happy hardcore, as breakbeat fans started to
recoil from jungle's moody vibe.A
massive boost came when happy anthem "Let
Me Be Your Fantasy" by Baby D unexpectedly shot to Number One--a full two
and half years after its original release.The song's creator, Dyce, had

stuck with the
euphoric style right through the dark era, churing out happy classics like
Baby D's "Casanova" and "Destiny", The House Crew's
"Euphoria (Nino's
Dream)" and "Super Hero". But "Fantasy" is especially
beloved, Dyce believes, because
"it was inspired by the hardcore scene itself"; the lyrics sound like a love
song, but it's really a tribute to the culture of luv'd upness.

"Fantasy"
struck a chord with a growing current of rave nostalgia, expressed in "Back To
'91" reunion events and in "old skool" sessions on pirate
stations.For younger kids just
getting into the scene, it was nostalgia for something they never actually
experienced--but such wistful wishfulness can be a potent force

(just look at the
New Wave of New Wave).

Right now, happy hardcore is big pretty
much anywhere the white rave audience
predominates, i.e. not London and Birmingham, where the heavy concentration of
hip hop, soul and reggae fans means jungle has more appeal.

Even in Scotland,
whose rave audience has hitherto been hostile to

breakbeat-based
hardcore, happy is taking off."Impact and Kniteforce sell well
here," says Mark Smith, who was voted top DJ in Scotland two years running.
"But I couldn't play a pure breakbeat set just yet."

There's a widespread feeling that jungle
has peaked, and that as ragga-jungle gets
ghettocentric and art-core drum & bass gets increasingly esoteric, the punters are turning
to happy hardcore."At Dreamscape
last year, the main floor was 60 per cent
jungle, 30 percent happy," says top happy selector DJ Vibes, referring to the
raves at the Sanctuary, Milton Keynes, which--at 6000

strong--are now
the UK's biggest events."This
year, it's 60 per cent happy, 30 per cent
jungle." According to Josh Lawford, who co-runs Double Dipped, "it's come full circle.
Last year you could book the top happy DJ's up to two weeks before the
event.Now they're all booked up six months
in advance." Jimmy J says

that when he
opened Remix Records a year ago, "we we were selling jungle with a bit of
happy.Now it's happy with a bit of
jungle.People just got pissed off with the jungle
scene.There's too much attitude.People on the happy scene tend to be on a
much better buzz." And Kniteforce's Chris Howell claims that happy is even
outselling jungle: "your average happy hardcore tune will shift three or four thousand,
your average jungle track about one to two thousand."

4/4 FOREVER

So what exactly
is happy hardcore? If truth be known, it's not simply a retread of '92 'ardkore, buts an
evolution from, and intensification of, precisely those elements that
jungle and drum & bass left behind as 'cheesy rave'.

Elements like the PIANO RIFF, sometimes
cannibalised from classic house tunes, sometimes
knocked out by the dozen by hard-up professional pianists for a hundred quid a
session. And like the SYNTH STAB-PATTERN, a.k.a. "mentasm stabs" (after the Joey
Beltram classic "Mentasm")--the sort of stuttering synth-riff

you'd hear on a
'92 classic like Urban Shakedown's "Some Justice", but even more epileptic.

Dance music theorist Will Straw argues
that high-end sounds (strings, pianos, female
voices) are coded as 'feminine', while low-end frequencies (drums & bass) are
coded as masculine. So the dark-side trend--which, as Dyce says, stripped hardcore
down to "drum & bass with a few weird sounds to colour it"--can

be seen as an
attempt to make hardcore harder, more masculine, by purging the "girly",
effeminate elements (high-pitched vocals, etc). If you could still get into what was
left after this drastic surgery (i.e. drum & bass, the ultra-minimalist
sound of compulsion-for-compulsion's sake), it meant you were a
connoisseur.Happy

hardcore, by
restoring the treble frequencies, re-establishes hardcore's links to rave music, and
to rave's origins in gay disco.

Another crucial element in happy hardcore
is the 4-TO-THE-FLOOR

KICK-DRUM. Again,
this stomping 4/4 beat reconnects hardcore to house, disco and Hi-NRG, whereas
jungle's hyper-syncopated breakbeats align it with hip hop, ragga and
dub.For happy-core fans, there came a
point at which jungle just got too
funky to dance to."Three years ago
in 'Ravescene' magazine, I stated that the
breakbeat was the death knell of rave," says Josh Lawford. "I

said that until
the 4/4 kick-drum was reinstated, the music would lack the energy needed for the
predominantly white rave audience to get into it. And I've been proved right: the
kick-drum has come back, and now you've got tracks that combine breakbeats and
kick-drum."

According to Ola of Stage One, compilers
of Jumpin' & Pumpin's definitive "Happy
Hardcore" anthologies, a 4/4 beat creates a totally different atmosphere. "When the
4/4 disappeared, people stopped shaking hands, hugging each other, sharing
drinks.And the dancing changed
too--people start to pose, it was more of look-at-me
thing than a letting-go. With 4/4, kids can bounce around more

easily.With jungle, you have to concentrate on the
rhythms, your movements are more rigid, and
that makes you look menacing and unapproachable. And breakbeats, when
they're sped up, they can sound a bit evil.That pounding kickdrum, it goes
with the feeling of rushin'--the whole vibe is of a mass of people jumping to
the same beat. It creates unity."

Still, the majority of happy tunesretain a breakbeat element--polyrhythmic
fills and state-of-art
drum & bass effects coil around the crowdpleasing core of the 4-to-the-floor.And this reflects the fact that happy
hardcore fans are pretty open-minded--DJ's drop the more uplifting jungle tunes
into their sets, fans listen to both kinds of
music."Drum & bass is a very
valid form of music," says Josh Lawford,"but
personally, I think it works better on the radio". "There's
definitely a place for trippy music, like Mo' Wax or Moving Shadow," says
Chris Howell. "But when I go out, I want a party atmosphere and a stomping
beat. There aren't enough dynamics in jungle. I want a build-up, a drop,
peaks.That's what Kniteforce tracks are
all about."

"The deeper stuff in drum &bass, it's head music," says DJ Brisk,
who does Eternity magazine's happy hardcore column (recently expanded to a full
page after a readers poll revealed that happywas the people's choice)."As a DJ, I can't play it at the peak of a night.It's not anthemic.If I got to a club, I want to have a good
time."

THROUGH BEING
COOL

Last year, a lot of people suddenly
realised that a jungle club was probably the last place
you'd be likely to have a 'good time'.You might hear some amazing music
(although increasingly you'd hear formulaic ragga ruffness on repeat-play), but
all the things that originally got you into hardcore---the sense of release,
the explosive euphoria-- had gone. Smiley-faced 'ardkore had

somehow evolved
into don't-touch-me jungle--a music of tension-but-no-release, a scene where eye
contact is a no-no, and where smiles (contrary to what you might have read in
these pages) are rarer than hen's teeth.

Rave culture involved the white working
class appropriation, via E, of gay disco's emotional
demonstrativeness and gestural abandon.Jungle is based around a blacker, hip hop
model of masculinity, one that's self-contained, tight-lipped and
bodily-armored.From '92's mania to
'95's moodiness, from sweaty nutters with their shirts
off to elegant stylists who don't perspire even when encased in

their bomber
jackets, the emotional temperature of the hardcore scene has dropped.

"Jungle is too cool," says Chris
Howell. "I'm pleased to be uncool and happy. It's like
with the white gloves. You ever seen a white glove person start a fight? If you
hate people who wear white gloves, then basically you're saying having a good
time is crap.Jungle people always say
you've not been to the right club, but
I've never been to one that's cheerful."

There's a strong undercurrent of racial
tension lurking beneath the

emergence of
happy hardcore. In large part, it's a backlash by white ravers against the
influx of Black British youth into the hardcore scene in '93 and '94. Even Ola, who's
black himself, feels it's perfectly understandable that white ravers have
regrouped around 'happy'.

"The little white kids were getting
harassed by dodgy raggas," he says. "There was a
lot of friction.See, people remember
the days when it was all hardcore,
everyone was united and it was more multi-racial.Kids should be able to go out and
enjoy themselves, and not feel threatened or intimidated."

Grant of Slammin' Vinyl (and DJ Red Alert
and Mike Slammer) argues that"hardcore
used to be a multiracial scene. But now jungle is mostly seen as black. A
lot of people who used to be into swing and ragga got into jungle last year,
and they claim 'it's our music'.So the
white kids are saying, 'well you can
keep it then, we'll make our own music".

As well as the racial factor, another
crucial difference between jungle and happy hardcore is
pharmacological. Happy-core is geared towards the rush, the arrested orgasm
sensation of Ecstasy--that's why it sounds like a perpetual crescendo. Drum
& Bass is designed for smokers--that's why its full of long, sustained
synth-tones and floaty textures, why every element in the music bar the breakbeats is at
half-speed or slower. Where drum & Bass encourages you to chill out, happy
hardcore says 'get busy, break a sweat!'.

"70 percent of a happy hardcore
crowd are on Ecstasy," says Vibes. "Without E, the atmosphere
wouldn't be so strong.On the garage
scene, it's cocaine; on the jungle scene it's
ganja and a bit of coke. So there's a more snotty atmosphere. I don't call
jungle 'rave music', cos you can't rave to it.If you're a happy

raver, you're not
into posing and looking at girls, you're just into going wild".

The final factor that makes happy hardcore
proudly and defiantly 'uncool' is that it doesn't
share jungle's obsession with staying underground.There's a sense in which
the 1991/92 commercial heyday of hardcore--when bands like Urban Shakedown,
Prodigy, SL2, Altern-8, regularly made the Top 10--is actually fondly

remembered as a
golden age."We want the happy
hardcore scene to get into the charts,"
says Grant Slammin'. An unabashed populist, Vibes says "I'd much rather 20
thousand people bought my record than 2000." The success of Baby D has shown happy
producers that the sky's the limit.Already FFRR have picked up Jimmy J &
Cru-L-T's anthem "Six Days" and plan to get the duo to re-record it

with a view to
scoring another "Fantasy" style smash.

CHEESE WITH
EVERYTHING?

Every Friday at
Bagley's Film Studios, Double Dipped is London's Mecca for the happy massive.
Like Club Labrynth, the atmosphere is refreshingly friendly (although nowhere
near as fervent and out-of-control as the olden golden days). But after a
while, the music starts to sound decidedly one-dimensional--all relentlessly
affirmative piano chords, skittering 165 b.p.m. breaks, and

synth-patterns
that all appear to be anagrams of some primordial, rush-inducing riff.Where drum & bass is busy hybridizing
itself with as many different forms of music as
possible, and as a result is proving itself to be '90s fusion (in both the best and
worst senses of the word), happy hardcore is purist.But can

such rave
fundamentalism lead anywhere? In music as in genetics, doesn't inbreeding lead
to sterility?

Even a happy-core stalwart like Chris
Howell admits that "the music was better in 1992.
People were more open-minded." Back in '92, DJ's would play Prodigy next to
Joey Beltram next to Ragga Twins next to 2 Bad Mice; individual hardcore tracks
were a mad hyper-eclectic mash-up of styles.Anti-purism (hardcore is sampladelic,
collage-based music) was the scene's strength and glory, especially
when compared to the textural uniformity of trance techno.

Today, though, as
Chris admits, "if I go to a happy rave, I'm bored cos I've heard all the
tunes before.And it's the same with
jungle.It'd be good if we could mix it up,
but the happy people won't have it, nor the jungle boys."

Others in the scene are less defensive.
Brisk frankly admits that when it comes to happy
tunes, "originality doesn't sell"."If you get too 'deep', you go up your own
arse," says Ola, referring to drum & bass. "Simplicity is bliss.Music sounds
better in a club if it's not too complicated, the speakers can breathe.People say happy is oldfashioned, but why
change something that's good?"

Not everyone agrees--in fact there's the
beginnings of a split within the happy scene
between all-out populists like Vibes, and a strain of"experimental" happy artists
like DJ Ham, Ramos & Supreme, and Sy and Unknown.Vibes is concerned that
some happy producers "are getting a bit too intelligent and futuristic,
they're showing off a bit on their computers.The tunes are good but

I couldn't play
'em in a rave.To be honest, I play it
safe.I'm into getting the crowd moving,
without too much disturbance."

Vibes more or less admits that happy
hardcore, at least as he conceives it, is an
aesthetic cul de sac."I don't
think the music will ever be as good again. You can
only be so original before you go into different worlds, so that it's not even
hardcore anymore."

Those who chose a different path away from
1992, i.e. the drum & bass crews,think
differently. Back in '92, DJ Aphrodite was half of Urban Shakedown. Today he releases
art-core weirdness under the names Aladdin, ruff ragga-jungle bizness under the names
Amazon II and A-Zone, and, as Aphrodite, the occasional hyper'n'happy
tune like the awesome "You Take Me Up".Despite this, he believes

that "happy
hardcore is people trying to hold onto the past.To me, rave was never originally
about 'happiness'. Acid was hard, deep music. Drum & bass is deep too.Happy hardcore--well, I'm against
cheese!Cheese is a dead end! There's only a
certain number of piano riffs you can use, which is why people are sampling old ones
from their house collection."

Other '92 veterans agree that breakbeat
music has moved on, and that happy hardcore is about
living in the past. Like Acen, the man behind exhilirating hardcore anthems
like "Trip To the Moon" (with its wonderfully stirring John Barry strings
from 'You Only Live Twice' and classic E-rush lyric "I can't BELIEVE these
feelings!!!"), like "Close Your Eyes" (which sped up a Jim
Morrison

mystic
incantation into a hilarious Munchkin squeal).Despite the fact that both tracks outsold
Prodigy's "Everybody In The Place", Acen dropped out of the scene in '93.Now, working on his comeback album, and still
aged only 22, he feels that he's grown
beyond 'happy'."I listen to music
for music now, not 'cos I've

got a couple of
pills in me. '92 was all a haze for me, I'd knock out a tune for my next PA and
think about what would sound ruff on the dancefloor.These days I'm listening
more deeply", he says, citing Mo' Wax as a current fave.

In a way, it's something of a tragedy that
hardcore had to split up

into factions,
with all the ruffness and risk-taking going into jungle, and all the fun and
friendliness re-emerging in happy-core.As it is, each breakaway scene is somehow
incomplete: drum & bass supplies the aesthetic thrills, but it can't provide the
emotional release that happy hardcore does, and vice versa.

It's a shame that
a single scene can't comprehend the "serious"

multi-dimensionality
of a Droppin' Science AND the "playful" mischief of a DJ Ham (whose latest
tune, "Masterpeace", hilariously rips off the synth-riff from Van Halen's
"Jump").For one of the truly
delightful things about 1992 hardcore,

compared to the
preciousness of 'intelligent' techno, was its sense of humour.

THE FUTURE

Ironically, the
future of happy hardcore itself may involve fragmentation and factionalism. One
strand of happy may merge with what Ola from Stage One calls 'bouncy techno'
(which has the same synth-stabs but no breakbeats), and sever its residual ties
with jungle by foregrounding the 4/4. It might even link up with 'happy gabba',
which is slowing in tempo to 180 b.p.m. The other strand would be 'tuff happy',
for people who like breakbeats but don't want to deal with jungle's attitude
problem.Another split might occur
between (don't laugh) 'intelligent happy hardcore', and the more poppy strain
(which is getting more 'musical' and less sample-oriented, using real
vocalists, etc).

And most people in the scene agree that a
name change might be in the offing, if all
the top labels can agree. No one seems to like the word 'happy'.Josh Lawford suggests 'stompy hardcore',
while DJ Seduction prefers the more technical '4-beat'."'Happy hardcore'", Seduction
grimaces. "Well, it just sounds a bit girly.Cheesy...."